Michigan and the Wisdom of Solomon

Meet the man unions have to thank for their big 'right-to-work' defeat.

By

Kimberley A. Strassel

Dec. 13, 2012 7:20 p.m. ET

A suggestion to those union folk protesting Michigan's new right-to-work law: All future complaints might prove better addressed to one
Lafe Solomon,
care of the National Labor Relations Board, Washington, D.C. Blind copy to President
Barack Obama
.

Mr. Solomon, remember, is the pro-union lawyer whom Mr. Obama recess-appointed in 2010 as general counsel of the NLRB, the federal agency governing union relations. Big Labor had helped give Mr. Obama his first election victory, and Mr. Solomon was one of the president's gifts back to the unions.

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The general counsel wasted no time in making good on the president's debts, penning legal opinions favorable to the union cause. But his big-time moment came in April 2011, when he issued an unfair labor practice complaint against
Boeing
,
for the heinous crime of deliberately choosing to locate a plant in a state (South Carolina) that doesn't allow unions to require workers to either join a union or pay union dues.

Prior to the Solomon complaint, the right-to-work movement had been stuck in idle. The U.S. hadn't witnessed a state vote for right to work in more than a decade, when Oklahoma in 2001 became the 22nd state to do so. The Solomon bombshell blew the issue back onto the national scene. Americans who had never heard of right to work were provided proof (in the form of Mr. Solomon's complaint) that such laws really did serve to pull businesses away from other states and create jobs. Why else would unions be complaining?

That public awareness of the benefits of right to work, in a time of economic struggle, was all the groundwork GOP legislatures needed to once again take up the cause. New Hampshire last year passed right-to-work legislation (though it was vetoed by a Democratic governor). Indiana became the 23rd right-to-work state in February. Michigan makes 24. According to the National Right to Work Committee, 19 states have introduced right-to-work legislation since the beginning of the 2011 legislative session—the most in decades. Many thanks, Mr. Solomon.

Not that the unions' Michigan defeat can be entirely sloughed off on the NLRB counsel. The Solomon decision was just one piece of the labor movement's broader recent strategy to aggressively use legislation and regulation to force more Americans into unions, and give those unions special advantages. That strategy has, for the most part, backfired.

For decades, union policy debates—while vicious—were largely confined to the cloistered halls of Washington agencies. Bill Clinton's NLRB issued plenty of outrageous pro-union decisions, yet few rose to a national debate. That changed in 2006. Worried by its dwindling numbers, and emboldened by the Democratic takeover of Congress, Big Labor dramatically escalated the fight, launching a public campaign for "card check"—legislation that would have significantly rewritten labor law to force more workers into unions.

ENLARGE

Second from the left: Lafe Solomon, general counsel of the NLRB.
Bloomberg

Card check became a national flashpoint, and the more Americans heard about how the bill would strip workers of their right to a secret ballot in union elections, the more they took a hard look at unions. In Gallup polls from 1978 to 2008, American approval of unions consistently hovered around 60%. In 2009—as unions continued to publicly fight for their card-check payoff, even as Americans struggled with a financial crisis—that approval plummeted to 48%. Teachers unions, which have likewise dug in against the high-profile issue of school reform, have notched significantly lower approval ratings.

This rising public skepticism of the union cause has had its consequences. State budget crises, exacerbated by unsustainable public-employee benefits, including pensions, would have been reason enough for governors like Wisconsin's Scott Walker and New Jersey's Chris Christie to rein in the costs of public-sector collective bargaining. But don't think the knowledge that the public was growing far more skeptical of unions wasn't also a significant motivator.

The union response to their defeats has been to further ratchet up the aggressive tactics that have hurt them. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder had repeatedly said that a right-to-work bill was not on his agenda. But that changed when Michigan's union movement chose to upset the balance with a confrontational ballot initiative this year that would have enshrined union power in the state constitution. The labor movement not only lost that initiative, but the scant 42% of the votes it got exposed its weakness. The right-to-work movement sniffed opportunity, seized it, and had a right-to-work law signed in under a month.

Unions are now offering a litany of excuses for their Michigan loss—the
Koch
brothers, the tea party, traitorous legislators, crafty bill-writing. Don't believe it. The unions lost in Michigan—as they've lost elsewhere—because they and their White House compatriots have forced the issue, and in the process forced Americans to take a side. And what we've discovered is that when the choice is between more freedom for workers, more choice for parents and more tax dollars for vital services or, on the other side, more coercive powers for a special interest—well, that isn't such a hard choice after all.

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